“Bobby laughed at me, not the usual good-natured chuckle of his we’d all come to know, but this was a dark sound, a mean sound. The laugh of a schoolyard bully that’ll dunk your head in the toilet and take your lunch money just ’cause he can. ‘You think you can reason with me?’ he said. ‘I’m older than mortal reason. I watched you all crawl up out of the ooze and slowly work your way up the evolutionary ladder, and I will be here to watch you crawl back into the ooze when it’s all said and done.’
“ ‘Looks to me like you ain’t been watching much of nothing down here,’ Ben said, all bluff and bravado like usual.
“Bobby looked over at him with this creepy little smile, and his eyes glowed blue again for just a second—I was sure of it this time. Said, ‘I’ve been imprisoned here for centuries, but that, for me, amounts to nothing more than an afternoon for you. Once my strength returns, I will be able to break these chains and live forever.’
“While he was giving his little speech, Joe and Ed edged their way around behind Bobby. I tried real hard not to look directly at ’em so as not to give ’em away, but Bobby must’ve sensed ’em somehow, ’cause as they moved in to grab him, he spun around and punched Ed hard in the face. I heard his nose crunch. Then Joe pounced and got Bobby in a headlock, but before me and Ben could get there to help, Bobby sunk an elbow into Joe’s soft middle, knocking him to the ground and straddling him. Bobby took a hold of Joe’s head and started banging it on the hard dirt floor.
“Me and Ben grabbed Bobby and started pulling him off, but before we could stop him, he yanked out the switchblade everybody knew Joe kept tucked into the waistband of his pants, flicked it open, and sank it deep in Joe’s throat. Blood bubbled and shot up like one of them geysers, spraying us all.
“We got Bobby down on the ground and tried to hold him. And he kicked and bucked the whole time like a wild bronco. He planted a size ten work boot in Ben’s balls, then started scratching at my eyes. We was always teasing him about not trimming his nails enough, and now he had turned ’em on me like weapons. That was when Ed, nose crooked and pouring blood, came up with one of them heavy flashlights and whacked Bobby on the head with it.
“Bobby didn’t go down, but it did distract him from me. He turned on Ed, who clobbered him again. And this time Bobby did go down. But he immediately started getting back up, so Ed socked him again. And again. And one more time for good measure.
“Finally, Bobby was still, face in the dirt, blood pooling around his head. My face was all scratched up but he hadn’t got at my eyes like he was aiming to.
“Me, Ed, and Ben sort of huddled together, me with my scratched face, Ed his broke nose, and Ben his bruised balls. One look at Joe was enough to tell he was beyond help, his eyes wide and glassy, his skin already turning bluish, and more blood than I’d ever seen soaking the dirt ’round him.
“The thing itself was going into fits, its body convulsing and its mouth open like it was screaming though there wasn’t no sound. It held its arms out and strained toward us, but the chains kept it from getting anywhere close. Finally, as if it had tuckered itself out, it lay back on the ground and went still again.
“Bobby wasn’t moving neither. I knew somebody had to check him, and seeing as I was still foreman, I knew it was gonna be me. Ben, his usual bluster gone, begged me not to, but I hunkered down next to Bobby, grabbed his wrist and felt for a pulse. Didn’t get none. Checked his other wrist and neck just to be sure, but I could see Ed had caved in the back of Bobby’s head, and I knew he was a goner.
“So there we were, over half the crew dead. Bobby, Earl, Henry, and Joe. Their bodies surrounded us, and that thing playing dead in the center of the cavern. I scrambled into a corner and threw up, and I heard Ben doing the same. Ed just stood there, swaying like a reed in a high wind, still clutching the flashlight that had bits of Bobby’s hair and brains on it, looking like his mind had gone somewhere that wasn’t where his body was at all.
“After I’d emptied my guts, I herded what was left of my crew down the tunnel and out into the open. ’Round us other men was still working, unaware of the living hell we’d just gone through. We discussed it briefly and decided the best thing to do was get Pete Campbell involved. He owned the mining operation and needed to know.
“A lot of men in his position probably would’ve run things from some cushy office somewhere, but not Pete. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty none, and he was there at the mine, overseeing things personally. I took him aside, gave him a rundown of what’d gone down. ’Course he didn’t believe me at first, but we took him down the tunnel and he went white as a ghost when he saw the bodies and that thing all chained up like it was.
“After that, he shut down the site for the day and sent everybody home but me, Ben, and Ed.
“Ed’s nose was swelling up like a balloon, but we doctored on it best we could. Pete had been a medic in the second World War, which he didn’t really like to talk about none, but he did a halfway decent job of setting Ed’s nose.
“We sat around for a couple of hours just drinking beer and trying to figure out what to do about the whole fucked up situation. We knew we had to kill that thing, whatever the hell it was. So we set about trying, but trying is all we did.”
“Are you saying it couldn’t be killed?” Norman asked with a laugh. “Mister, do you really expect us to believe this shit?”
Felder leaned forward, eyes blazing with an intensity that caused Norman to shrink back. “Son, I don’t really give a rat’s ass what you believe, but I’m gonna tell you the story and you’re gonna listen. What you do with it when I’m done ain’t none of my concern, but by God I’m gonna get this off my chest.”
Norman nodded and kept his mouth shut.
“Now, as I was saying, we decided to kill that thing, but nothing we did seemed to work. Tried shooting it, but the bullets just seemed to sink into the flesh, the wounds closing up like nothing’d happened. Even stuck a shotgun right up to its head and fired, expecting it to bust like a watermelon, but nothing. Next we tried lighting it on fire, and it burned up bright and hot enough, but when it burned itself out, instead of ashes we found the thing still lying there, not even singed. Ben even tried taking an ax to it, but it was like trying to stab air. Flesh just separated around the blade then closed back up, pretty as you please. We even considered throwing dynamite in the cavern and blowing the thing to Kingdom Come, but we was scared it’d cause the ground around the Quarry to cave in, and we wasn’t even sure it would work. Whatever it was, we couldn’t kill it. So Pete was the one actually came up with the plan.
“First we got Carl Manning involved; he was the sheriff ’round these parts back then. He was mighty ill when we called him away from supper, but when he found out what was going on I think all thought of food left his brain. Hell, I know I ain’t had much of an appetite since that day. We needed Carl involved ’cause we had four bodies that we had to explain. We decided on a story of a cave-in, killing the four men we’d lost. And Pete announced he was shutting down the entire Gaffney operation and moving it to Blacksburg. Once we stopped pumping the Quarry, over time it filled up with water. We kinda hoped that thing’d drown but it didn’t seem likely. At least it’d be buried again, under water this time instead of earth. And we all prayed that would be the end of it.”
The silence that followed seemed deep, as if the air had thickened with it, sticking them all in place. When Emilio inhaled, it felt like he was swallowing molasses.
Norman’s face was awash in skepticism. And Emilio didn’t blame him. He was skeptical too. It was, after all, an insane story, and yet it filled the gaps perfectly…
Too perfectly to dismiss.
Turning to the old man, Emilio said, “And all those stories about the miners accidentally hitting the spring and all their equipment getting buried in the ensuing flood?”
“We spread lies. We wanted people to understand how dangerous the place was so they’d stay away. But we knew they couldn’t han
dle the truth. Being so close to the college, we was worried kids’d wanna go swimming and such, so we tried to impress on the town that the place was a death trap. And as for divers, Carl spread word about the suction created by the tunnels and the danger of cave-ins to keep ’em out. Mostly worked too, except for that one idjit in sixty-four.”
“The one that drowned?” Emilio said.
Felder looked up at him. “Heard the story, have ya?”
“Just that a diver drowned.”
“Well, that’s what everyone figured. Went down and didn’t come back up. But right after, folks around the college started disappearing. I had a feeling I knew what it was, that the diver hadn’t drowned but had found the tunnel and now that thing was controlling him the way it controlled Bobby. By that time, Carl had retired and moved up north and I’d taken over his old job. I decided to leave Ed and Ben out of it; they both had families and didn’t need to get involved with this mess. I did call Pete though, and together we went off hunting the diver.
“Found him holed up in that old abandoned church on the opposite side of the Quarry from the school. Was a hell of a fight and I won’t bore you with the details, but he ended up killing Pete before I managed to kill him. Then I did what I had to do, dumped the diver’s body in the water and blamed the disappearances on Pete; said I had to kill him in the line of duty. God rest his soul, he’d’ve understood.
“Since then, I’ve spent most of the rest of my life trying to forget, to pretend it never happened, that it was some bad dream I had. I thought I’d almost reached that place when your dumb-ass friend came along and started it all up again. Ed, Ben, and Carl—they all passed on now, so it’s just me left. Well, I’m too old to get back in the game, I tell you. No more monster hunting for me.”
Emilio tried to speak, found his mouth too dry, worked up some spit then tried again. “So you’re saying you think this thing is controlling Dale now?”
“I don’t know how, but yeah, somehow it got its hooks into him and is using your friend to bring it more folks to feed on, so it can get strong enough to break its chains and free itself.”
Norman shook his head, and turned to Emilio. “Em, you’re not buying any of this nonsense, are you? I mean, no offense Mr. Felder, but—”
Felder held up a hand, silencing Norman in mid-sentence. “I told ya, don’t much care if you believe me or not, was just a tale needed telling. And now that it’s done, I feel a load off my shoulders, a responsibility that ain’t mine no more. Passed the torch, so to speak. Now if you’ll excuse me a moment, got something needs attending to in the bedroom.”
Without another word, Felder stood up, his knees popping like kindling in a fire. He shuffled down a short hallway then disappeared into a darkened room, leaving the door partially opened.
They sat in silence, Emilio trying to digest everything he’d heard. The ranting of a delusional mind? Perhaps. But could there be kernels of the truth buried beneath the madness?
After a few minutes, when Felder still hadn’t returned, Norman said, “I’ve been patient, Em, but there’s nothing we can learn from this old man. I say it’s time we got out of here.”
Emilio was about to agree…
A gunshot exploded!
And it echoed loudly through the trailer, the scent of cordite smoke wafting from the dark room…
Norman and Emilio shouted in alarm and rushed down the hallway.
They stepped into the room, Emilio fumbling at the wall for the light switch.
The overhead bulb flickered into life…
Norman gasped and fell back against the wall. Emilio looked past him and saw Felder lying on a small bed. The smoking .45 was still in his mouth, teeth clenched around the barrel.
The top of his head was gone. Blood and brain matter were sprayed across the wall in a garish mosaic. The stench of feces joined the acrid cordite, and Emilio began to gag.
Norman fumbled his cell phone out and called 911, and Emilio stepped further into the room. Norman called for him to stop, but Emilio was focused on a piece of paper lying on the bedside table, held down by a snow globe with a replica of Gaffney’s infamous peach-shaped water tower inside. Emilio stopped when he was close enough to read the message scrawled on the paper.
MY WORK IS DONE. YOUR TURN.
Chapter Twenty
THEY SPENT SEVERAL hours at the police station downtown answering questions. Not that they had any real answers, but they told Sheriff Powell everything. Including Felder’s surreal story. Powell just shook his head and mumbled, “Damn shame.”
Norman had called his Lt. and explained the situation, and someone else was called in to cover his shift. Emilio didn’t feel much like going back to the dorm, so after leaving the police station, they both went to Norman’s apartment.
They snuggled close under the sheets but didn’t say much. Emilio wasn’t sure how long they remained that way, the only sound in the darkness their steady breathing. Finally, he said, “Norm, are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“Before tonight, I’d never seen a dead body. What about you?”
“My folks, at the funeral home, all made up in their caskets. But that’s different.”
“What would make someone do a thing like that?”
Norman pulled Emilio closer, tighter. “Em, he wasn’t in his right mind. He was suffering from some kind of delusion.”
“Was he? Can we be sure of that?”
Norman was silent a moment before answering. “He was talking about an inhuman creature that could not be killed, chained four hundred feet underground, with the ability to take over people’s minds and control them. You can’t seriously believe any of that.”
Emilio turned on his side so he could face Norman. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“What?”
“Do you believe that the spirit lingers even after the body dies?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, a lot of people do believe in ghosts. And others believe in UFOs, and ESP, and telekinesis.”
“What’s your point, Em?”
“Just that a lot of people believe in things beyond human understanding.”
“A lot of kids believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Just because people believe in something, that doesn’t mean it’s real.”
“So all those people who believe in ghosts and life on other planets, they’re all delusional too? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, not at all, it’s just…well, people tend to hold to certain beliefs to fill a void in their lives. People believe in an afterlife because they fear death; they believe in extraterrestrials because they feel alone in the world; they believe in psychic powers so they don’t have to feel so ordinary. Taken to an extreme, these beliefs can become pathological, but mostly they’re just people trying to make themselves feel better.”
“So you think my wanting to believe Felder is an attempt to fill some void?”
Norman planted a gentle kiss on Emilio’s forehead. “You so desperately want to believe your friend couldn’t be responsible for the things that have happened, so you’re willing to cling to anything that will make it not his fault. Maybe that’s even how it started for Felder. Perhaps he felt responsible for his men being killed in the cave-in, and then having to kill his former boss years later…maybe he created this elaborate fantasy to deal with all that.”
Emilio chuckled and put his head on Norman’s chest, listening to the thumping music of his heartbeat. “I guess you’re saying if I don’t drop this, I could end up like Felder.”
“That’ll never happen; I wouldn’t let it.”
“You think Felder told that story to Dale? I know he said he didn’t, but considering what happened we can’t exactly trust anything he told us. If he told Dale that story, and Dale was already starting to lose it, maybe he latched onto it and started to believe it. Maybe he thinks the creature from Felder’s story is controlling him. Can that happen, one unstable person adopting another unstab
le person’s delusion?”
He felt more than saw Norman shrug. “I guess it’s theoretically possible. I mean, mass hysteria is just a form of group delusion.”
“So maybe if Dale—”
“Shhh,” Norman said, putting a finger to Emilio’s lips. “It’s not like you have to figure all this out tonight. Why don’t you give your brain a rest and try to get some sleep?”
“I honestly don’t think I can sleep.”
“In that case, I could always find another way to distract your brain. If you’re up for it, that is.”
Norman’s hand glided softly down Emilio’ chest and stomach.
Emilio smiled, grateful for the distraction.
* * *
Connie tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position. She always had trouble sleeping in an unfamiliar bed.
Not that the bed was entirely unfamiliar. She had spent a few nights in it with Dale while his roommates were away. It seemed almost perverse that she was here now, attempting to sleep in the bed of someone who had tried to kill her.
But this was better than her dorm room. A lot better. She couldn’t be alone. Not now.
She listened to Steve’s soft snores on the other side of the room. And Brock and Zeke were right across the hall. Three strong men to protect her. Much as it pissed off her “Girl Power!” persona, this was the safest she’d felt in weeks.
But she couldn’t shake the sickness from lying in Dale’s bed. Though his stuff was no longer in the room, she still imagined his scent, as if his essence had been imprinted on the mattress. Perhaps she should have offered to sleep on the couch, or at the very least asked Steve to switch beds with her.
Or you could have asked to share his bed with him, she thought and immediately chastised herself. Steve had been exceedingly nice to her since Dale’s attack, but she couldn’t have a crush on him; it was too soon. Her feelings were all mixed up because he had saved her life, and he had lost someone close to him in all this mess as well. Sure, he was handsome with that great smile, and last night instead of a nightmare she’d dreamt about her and Steve, lying naked together on a pristine beach with white sands shifting silkily beneath them…
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